The stone gates slammed shut behind them.
Caelen stood with the other Novices — maybe twenty of them, most still wearing the scorched remnants of their Academy uniforms — in a circular cavern deep beneath the cliffs.
Torches lined the walls, each guttering in a different colored flame — blue, red, gold, green, violet. Magic thickened the air, heavy, oppressive, coiling down their throats.
At the center of the chamber, carved into the floor, was a giant symbol: a seven-pointed star surrounded by serpents devouring themselves.
Instructor Kaelle paced in front of them, her boots tapping sharply on the stone.
"You were not supposed to see this," she said, voice carrying easily. "Not until the end of the year. Not until you were ready."
Her gaze cut through them, sharp as knives.
"But ready or not, the Gauntlet has been called."
Behind her, heavy iron doors began to creak open.
Darkness poured from the gap like smoke.
Kaelle smiled without warmth.
"Survive," she said simply. "Or die. It matters little to us."
And then she vanished — simply disappeared — leaving them alone.
The darkness thickened.
A low growl echoed from the tunnel ahead.
The Novices shifted uneasily.
Someone — a tall boy from House Metal — muttered, "It's just illusions. Scare tactics."
As if answering him, a scream tore from the shadows — high, human, and final.
The Metal boy went pale.
Caelen's heart slammed against his ribs.
This is real.
The darkness moved.
Something came out.
⸻
The first challenge hit them immediately.
A beast — huge, plated in black iron, eyes burning red — lunged from the tunnel.
It moved faster than anything that big had a right to.
It slammed into the Novices, scattering them like leaves.
Caelen barely dodged a swipe of massive claws.
The stone where he had been standing exploded.
He rolled, coming up in a crouch.
The other Novices scrambled, panicking, trying to remember their training.
Spells flew — fire, lightning, ice — slamming into the beast's hide.
But it absorbed them — magic sinking into its metal plates like water into sand.
The Metal boy — the one who had sneered — charged, a blade of molten iron in his hands.
The beast met him head-on.
It ended in a heartbeat.
A crunch. A scream. A spray of blood.
The boy's body fell in two neat halves.
Caelen felt bile rise in his throat — but he forced it down.
Move. Think.
He darted toward the wall, searching for a weakness.
The beast's eyes followed him — not the strongest fighter, but maybe the smartest.
Good.
He had its attention.
He needed to be faster.
He reached inward — to the ember.
But something else stirred first.
Not the ember.
Ashara.
Let me help you, little one.
Her voice in his head was silk and knives.
Caelen hesitated.
Trust her?
Another Novice screamed — a girl this time, her leg crushed beneath the beast's paw.
Caelen made a decision.
He opened the door.
⸻
Magic poured through him like a broken dam.
Not fire, not light — something darker, older, deeper.
The world sharpened. The beast's movements slowed.
Caelen moved.
In three blinks he was across the room.
The beast turned, too slow.
Caelen leapt —
—landed on its back—
—and drove magic into the gaps between the plates.
Explode.
The word wasn't spoken, but it didn't need to be.
The beast convulsed.
With a deafening roar, it shattered from the inside out — raining metal shards across the chamber.
Caelen hit the ground hard, rolling to his feet.
Silence fell.
Broken bodies lay scattered.
Maybe half the Novices were dead already.
The survivors stared at Caelen like he was something worse than the monster.
He didn't blame them.
Inside him, Ashara purred.
You see? Together, we are strong.
Caelen ignored her.
For now.
⸻
There was no rest.
The iron doors opened wider.
Ahead, a second chamber.
A second challenge.
Velric's voice echoed magically across the space:
"Those who remain, proceed."
No apology. No regret.
Caelen helped a limping boy — House Air, by his robes — to his feet.
"Come on," he said roughly.
The boy stared at him with wide eyes, but nodded.
Together, they stepped forward into the next trial.
⸻
The second chamber was a maze.
Not a normal maze — not walls and corridors.
This maze moved.
Walls of stone shifted, flowed, reshaped themselves like living things.
Traps waited at every turn — blades, acid, crushing jaws of enchanted iron.
Worse, the walls themselves whispered.
Not with words.
With memories.
Caelen saw flashes of home — his mother's face, thin and tired, her hands bleeding from endless work.
He stumbled.
The wall laughed.
He gritted his teeth.
Not real.
He pressed onward.
Around him, the others struggled.
Some fell into pits.
Some ran into walls that swallowed them whole.
Some simply curled up and wept.
Caelen moved faster.
Memory after memory clawed at him — the alley where he first killed a man to survive, the smell of blood on his hands.
Not real. Not real.
He focused on something else — a pulse.
The ember.
It burned steady inside him, a true north.
He followed it.
The maze fought back — walls slamming together behind him, traps triggering inches from his heels.
But he kept moving.
Faster.
Faster.
Until—
Light.
A doorway, framed in gold.
He sprinted.
Something lunged from the wall — a shadow with knives for hands — but he willed himself faster, burning the last of his strength.
He dove through the door—
—and fell, hard, into the third chamber.
⸻
There were only six Novices left now.
From twenty, down to six.
Caelen looked around.
The boy from House Air. A girl from House Water. A twinsister pair from House Earth. A brooding boy wrapped in Shadow magic.
And him.
Six survivors.
The third chamber was simple.
A circle.
A pedestal in the center.
A single object atop it.
A silver crown.
Velric's voice echoed again:
"Only one may wear the crown. Only one may pass."
The meaning was clear.
They were no longer allies.
⸻
The boy from House Air lunged first.
He was fast, desperate —
—but not faster than Caelen.
Caelen sidestepped, swept the boy's legs out from under him, and slammed him unconscious with a crack of magic.
Five left.
The Earth twins moved together — clever, trying to trap him.
Caelen burned through their wall of vines with a pulse of ember-fueled fire, catching one twin in the blast.
She screamed, clutching her scorched side.
The other hesitated — too long.
The Shadow boy struck her down from behind.
Three left.
Caelen, the Water girl, and the Shadow boy.
They circled each other warily.
The Water girl attacked first — whips of cutting ice lashing toward Caelen.
He blocked, barely, then countered — a blast of pure kinetic force that hurled her across the room.
The Shadow boy moved then — silent, deadly.
He almost had Caelen — almost.
But Ashara whispered.
Caelen ducked the blade by an inch, twisted, and slammed his elbow into the boy's throat.
The Shadow boy crumpled.
Caelen turned.
The Water girl dragged herself upright, blood running down her arm.
She met his gaze.
And nodded.
She wasn't giving up.
Neither was he.
⸻
The final duel was brutal.
Magic against magic.
Strength against will.
The chamber shook from their battle.
Finally, Caelen saw his opening.
A flicker in her defenses — exhaustion.
He struck — a controlled blast of concussive force.
She flew backward, hit the wall hard, and slumped.
Unmoving.
Caelen staggered to the pedestal.
His body screamed in protest.
Every muscle burned.
The ember inside him flickered — dangerously close to going out.
But he reached out.
Took the crown.
Placed it on his head.
And everything changed.
⸻
Light exploded outward.
The world twisted.
Caelen saw flashes — visions — not of the present, but of what was coming.
A war.
A kingdom burning.
An army of the dead rising.
And at the center of it all —
Himself.
Wearing the silver crown.
Standing atop a mountain of corpses.
Behind him — a shadow with Ashara's face.
Smiling.
⸻
He collapsed.
Darkness swallowed him whole.